The book “I porti e le mafie” by our post-doc research fellow  Marco Antonelli on organised crime penetration in Italian ports has won a special mention for the Paginedamare prize.

Three short questions on Antonelli’s work.

Why it is useful, interesting and important to observe how crime infiltrates ports

The results of this research show how the mafia and criminal actors are able to operate within ports and in the maritime sector thanks to actors in the legal economy, thanks to collusion and complicity with parts of the economy, politics and society. Observing how crime infiltrates ports helps not only to decipher the dynamics of illegal markets but, more generally, to understand the mechanisms of how global economies function and malfunction. What is clear from the research is that it is precisely the vulnerabilities of the port system that offer opportunities for criminal actors. These vulnerabilities concern the economy of ports, the decision-making processes of the public administrations that govern them, and the social context that animates working and productive life within the ports.

How and why the transformation of the production process has favoured the penetration of mafia organisations

Over time, ports have increasingly become a central hub of the global economy, especially for the movement of goods. In these spaces, therefore, the most aggressive dynamics of capitalist and liberalist expansion have manifested themselves, and the slogan “time is money” has been taken to extremes, often at the expense of safety, quality of work and public controls. It is precisely the weakening of institutional and social controls, combined with an ever-increasing growth in transnational connections, that has allowed the development of increasingly large and lucrative criminal markets, in which mafia organisations have played a significant role.

What are the differences in this penetration between Gioia Tauro and Genoa?

Genoa and Gioia Tauro are two very different ports from a historical and geographical point of view. The type of port is also different: the former is a multifunctional port with a strong impact on the local area and its surroundings, while the latter is a trans-shipment port, where containers are transferred from larger to smaller ships. This diversity is also reflected in the criminal opportunities that arise. In both cases, the most active organisation is the ‘Ndrangheta, with one substantial difference: in Gioia Tauro, the port was established in an area with a long history of mafia presence, which has influenced life in that territory, while in Genoa, it is an area of territorial expansion, although the presence of criminal groups has a history of decades.